Gawndy the Great

May as well load up on them. Everyone else is loading. 😁

What if we don’t? He cannot walk into another club right ? Does he have to nominate for the draft? What’s stopping WC taking him with their 1st pick (if they finish last).

And we would be a very complete side. But in that bizzaro world, Weid would have won the Coleman 3 years running.

Carlton are clearly loading.

Tigers of old are back. This is what I was expecting the Dees to look like against the Pies.

I think the stat was scores from centre clearance. Not raw centre clearances.

This is all about perceived pressure. when you get a clean break like that, most players that have good awareness take a bounce and either get to the 50 and have a shot, or hit a lead up target. You do that once or twice, you then get isolation at the top of the goal square so when you do need to bomb it, there isnt half the opposition team sitting under the ball waiting to intercept it.

Pay for Entrecote's broken desk. 😂

My revised team below. Pretty much our premiership backline. Bring in May for Turner, Weid for Gawn, Tommo for M.Brown and Rivers for Sparrow. A few movements in particular of note: Brayshaw to HF to improve forward connection and delivery. He also has the defensive awareness and presence to create stoppages in the forward line. Tommo at CHF but can also pinch hit on the wing with JJ allowing Weid to rotate with LJ in the ruck. Key D Match-ups: May - McStay; Petty - Daniher; Pig - Cameron. If they roll Rayner through may need to get Pig onto him which leaves Bowey or Salem to Cameron. McCarthy and Bailey can also prove quite damaging. I think we get Lever onto McCarthy as he is not as agile as Bailey. Some concern here with ground balls. Midfield is pretty much known and no real difference from last year. Lions generally shark Gawns ruckwork so having LJ in there will potentially nullify all of their scouting and centre bounce tactics. Worryingly though, is that large percentage of our scores have come through Centre Bounces in the last 6 weeks with our turnover game dropping right off. Lions will try and choke us in the middle, which could limit us to scores from turnover. Forward line is where this game will be won or lost. Andrews, Starcevich and Adams are all good defenders. Andrews probably takes BBB, Adams to Tommo/Weid and Starcevich on Fritta. Not an ideal matchup for us, but we can exploit them. They are probably also a bit more damaging on the ground with Rich, Ah Chee and ANderson. This all goes out the window if its wet, which is where i think we will have a slight advantage. Also looks like Zorko is our with a hammy. B: Hibberd May Lever HB: Bowey Petty Salem C: JJ Viney Lingers HF: Brayshaw Tommo ANB F: Kozzy BBB Fritta Foll: LJ Trac Oliver Bench: Harmes, Weid, Spargo, Rivers OUT: Sparrow, Gawn, Turner, M. Brown IN: Weid, Tommo, May, Rivers

I agree, but it could be anyone of Bowey, Salem or Brayshaw who to tend be the best users of the ball. We need to improve our forward connection which means we need a better kick going in. We bring Rivers back in to backfill Brayshaw. JJ and Lingers stay on the wings and we move Brayshaw into the HF / Midfield rotation. One of Sparrow / Harmes / ANB to make way. Will this happen? No - i cannot see Goodwin pulling this move.

18 teams should be the limit. How do you manage the bye with 19 teams? one poor sod of a team gets bye round 1 and then plays 18 rounds of footy. Given our 9 day break it’ll probably be us. We have too many teams already in Melbourne so I think ultimately 2 need to relocate. 1 tonTassie and the other to Darwin in 5-7 years time. Should be Collingwood.

Let’s just hope it absolutely pelts down with rain and is ice cold and windy. With our luck we’ll get an unseasonal warm front from the Bahamas with no wind.

L,W,L,W,W,L,W,W,L (5-4)* *Subject to change if we beat the Lions next Thursday.

Maybe they should consider delivering F50 with those NRL style rugby kicks and get the small forwards to hunt the grubber. Do it a few times and the backline will become a little anxious. Every now and then change it up with a dart to the top of the square, right on BBB's head. For mine: Out: Max, Turner, Mitch Brown In: Tommo, May, Bedford and Weid as Emergency B: Pig, May, Lever HB: Bowey, Petty, Salem C: Brayshaw, Viney, Langdon HF: Harmes, Tommo, Spargo F: Kozzy, BBB, Fritta Foll: LJ, Trac, Oliver Bench: ANB, Sparrow, JJ, Bedford

Bar the Harmes injury, all have been joint / concussion (Smith, Salem, Gawn, Tmac, Lever, May and now Max) which are a little more luck than training / loading. We are now without Gawn for a few weeks, but aside from him and Tmac we are full strength football side with an upcoming ruck star (i get the jury is still out on that). Ideally we would be able to have a straight swap for both of these with reasonable depth, we don't. LJ must take the load now and im not sure he's completely ready for the challenge purely from a fitness standpoint.

When it rains it pours. We have been cruelled by injury this year but so have many other teams. given the significance of Gawn, i now think we will be lucky to hold onto a top 4 spot. Upside is his body will be allowed to heal and hopefully he can return quicker and provide us some energy towards the tail end of the season. I'm not a fan of Weid until he can string 4-5 games in the VFL and be busting door down for selection not a gentle tap. He is not the answer right now. Joel Smith should be approaching fitness by now so hopefully he can provide some alternative forward options 2 weeks time. We do need to bring in some additional height though to cover Max, so i think Tommo could come in here. He can play both front and back and provide LJ some chop out in the ruck. He is much more versatile than Weid and has some physicality in his game.

There is a lot to read into that statement.

The one thing id add to this is that we dont know how other teams in our run home will fair over the next 9 weeks. Anything could happen that completely derails their season (think Bruce @ BullDogs;) just because their formline is hot now, doesnt mean they will be any good when we play them. This all goes to [censored] if Gawn has done his ankle though. I can live with a few weeks but a full syndesmosis will pretty much ruin our season.

Yep I can’t handle the demon bashing in the media as it makes my blood boil. So I have nothing to listen to or watch.

He’ll be ok. If it was an injury he wouldn’t be ae to stand on it

I think they are doing a good job of that already. We saw how coaches can act in game when Longmuir realised Trac was not fit and they adjusted mid game. The moment they can detect we lack run. Exploit, Exploit, Exploit! I listened to the Jonesy segment on SEN and he does mention it but quotes he is not close enough to the club to say definitively. But I chose to say he knows and he has all given us supporters the relief that it will pick back up.

Why is it a big secret? if they are loading just somebody from the club come out and say it! It doesn’t have to be disrespectful to the oppos but give the fan base some explanation of the cliff dive drop in form.

Yep it was evident even during the WC and Norf games. It’s a hallmark of our game plan and when it is not there expect the opposition to run rampant. There is plenty of data to suggest this has been problematic for at least a month so that is before any reasonable loading etc became a suggestion. To me it’s simply desire and that extra 1%. It’s not there or the players are fried. Let’s hope it’s the former because that can be fixed easily.

One of the hallmarks and foundations of our game plan is pressure on the ball carrier and around the ground. If that’s not firing then the rest will fall apart. But similarly, you fix the pressure and you’ll wonder how we lost the past 3 games. Funny listening to ANB that we were not gassed in the last quarter and it was more about wrestling back momentum.

Not necessarily. It’s scores from turn over and speed on the ball with high risk taking. This was the Swans effort repeated. Dockers was hard to say given the May injury and Trac illness but they don’t play this brand of footy - they are more like us. But mostly it is pressure, no matter how solid your back six when you don’t have enough pressure on the ball, bad things will always happen.